Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1)

by Holden, Ryan

  The next morning Paris woke earlier than usual. Whether this was due to his excitement or the pine cones in his back he didn't know. A lot of good sleeping under the cart had done him tonight—no rain to speak of. Why hadn't he slept in it?

  He groaned and woke himself up, or thought he had, then finished waking with a cold splash of water. The village was barely stirring: soon enough for small talk but not trade. He groaned again and climbed into his cart to sleep away the next couple hours.

  “Good morning, Brian.”

  The kardja shifted beneath Brian and he sat upright. Devlin pulled him to his feet.

  “Good morning dad.” Brian stomped his feet and felt the blood rush back into his legs. His left foot tripped on the level ground in front of him and he staggered to catch himself.

  “My son reels like soldier recently paid,” Devlin smiled.

  Brian grinned back at him. The grin faded, inside faster than out, as events of the past few days rose to his memory.

  “And like a soldier would rather be with his fellows than his master and commander,” Devlin finished sternly.

  Brian's grin disappeared, then he smiled again. “Does mother know?”

  “I don't see how she would find out. These kardja will keep me busy all morning, won't have a chance to speak to her again until you unexpectedly show up early this afternoon.” He walked among the kardja, whistling at them. Here and there a late riser needed a shake of the head but soon Devlin and his herd were on their way along the mountainside.

  “Come along, Kerry,” Brian said and followed them.

  They fed and watered the kardja. Brian avoided his father's gaze, not looking forward to explaining what he had found in Darach, but Devlin never brought it up. After a couple hours Brian loosened up and forgot about it.

  He was home. The early spring sun was high in the sky and not a cloud challenged it. A cool wind swirled up the face of the mountain, stroking away the sun's heat from his cheek. His father crooned in the background, faintly heard above the swishing brook. Splash and kerplunk, some stones fell into place. His father's favorite part—damming up the stream for his skittish dam. She was the oldest and the whitest of them all, already a mother before Brian was born.

  He sat down in the grass where a couple were grazing. Their jaws' rhythmic chomps marked a steady tempo, a tempo that stabilized all. Sun, wind, water; kardja, father, son; nothing was missing, nothing was strange, nothing was lost.

  A raven cawed in the distance. Brian turned at the sound and the magic was lost. His vision now took in all six of the kardja. It blurred and he saw, even more clearly, the emptiness of the meadow where thirty-odd wooly-backs should be. The raven cawed again and he heard in it the shrill call of the gossip and the rasp of the pock-marked man. He threw his head on his knees and covered his head.

  “Not quite the same, right, son?” Devlin stiffly bent his knees and sat down beside him.

  Brian jerked his head. He wiped his nose but said nothing.

  “I'm going to miss this place all the same. We'll still have the trees and the sun. Your mother, you, me,” his voice grew quiet. “Won't be that bad.”

  “Our kardja?” Brian asked.

  Devlin looked at him and shook his head.

  Brian jumped up to his feet and started pacing, “We can't sell them. They are ours. They know us and we know them. We sell them and we will never come back.”

  “I know, I know,” Devlin said. There was a long silence. “It's winter. They are not enough to keep us. I have no other option: it will take time to find what is in store for us. Selling them will open the door to another life.”

  “But,” he stood up, and energy came back into his voice, “we will not sell until we must. Perhaps you will save them, Brian. How was your trip to Darach?”

  Brian's spirit, bruised before, now fell, crushed. He tried to say something but shut his mouth. His eyes told the story well enough.

  “Ach, it is as I feared.” Devlin dropped his gaze and stared into the shadow of the forest's edge.

  The shadow grew and took over Brian's mind. The mountain had failed them. His expedition to Darach was a disappointment. And his father had no answer. Brian sighed, shoved the gossip deep into the recesses of his mind, and followed the kardja home.

  His resolve was weakened at the sight of his mother. All this week he had wondered what he thought of her, what his father thought or knew or suspected, whether she bore the guilt on her face. How he would question her or how he could know and not know forever. What he had not considered was how he missed her.

  “Brian!” Ramona dropped her garlic on the ground, not bothering to hang the last bunch of cloves on the eaves. He rushed toward her; she, wiping hands on her pale blue apron, moved to him.

  All thoughts of doubt fled at her touch. Any pretense of claiming adulthood status, that he was an independent man now, seemed nonsensical. Why should one have to remove the best of childhood in order to embrace adulthood?

  “Look at you. All the way to Darach and back and by yourself too.” Ramona had him by the elbows and was proudly looking over his face.

  “Mother,” alright maybe time for adulthood, “I've been there dozens of times before.”

  “But never alone. And never overnight,” she reminded him. “Where'd you sleep? What did you eat? Did you eat?” she pinched below his rib cage.

  “Dear, give the boy a breath. It may be that eating now will pull the story out of him,” Devlin came up and kissed his wife.

  “Right, supper. That will be ready as soon as you are all washed up.”

  That night Brian felt as if he sat on Kerdae's forge. Every nerve quivered, the truth so close to the surface, just one slip from erupting. Stumbling over Kerdae and Enda, abashedly recounting the weaver's gloomy prognostications, and unequivocally skipping over the gossip he had heard. If he let fall a wrong word he feared his world's fabric would rip into a chaos from which he saw no return.

  Four

  It was time. The family looked their last at the cabin on the side of the mountain. No smoke rose from its chimney; no light flickered inside. The wooden walls, gray-weathered over a score of years' seasons, blended into the dull countryside of the early spring. Another score of years and it would be no more, brought down by rot and winds and its place reclaimed by tree and shrub once more. All Brian's life he'd known this as home. And he could do nothing to preserve it.

  Anything and everything of value had been stripped from it, from the metal door latch Kerdae had given them a dozen years ago to the iron grate in the fireplace. Brian wondered what would come of the small chair in the corner. Neither of his parents spoke of it and at length, after from a kiss from his mother and a last rock from his father, it was left behind in solitude. A half-full sack of flour, Ramona's sheaves of dried herbs, two pots and a pan, utensils, spare clothing, shears—these and other things were bundled in bedspreads or blankets or tied with a string to a kardja's pack saddle.

  The kardja were excited. They could tell something was different from standing around all morning, not being led out to pasture. They ambled about, biting at a clump of grass here and there and watching the humans. One by one four of them were haltered, saddled, and loaded up. The youngest two gamboled about, smelling the strange cargoes until brushed away by a gentle push on their nose.

  Though now rarely used as beasts of burden, an adult kardja could carry twelve stone weight up mountains and down. It was even more rare this time of year. Any pack or saddle, no matter how well designed, chafed at the kardja's back, shedding hairs and marring the fleece. For felt or thread this didn't matter. However, most years a few of Devlin's fleeces were perfect and sold whole, fetching the best price, so he played the odds.

  He didn't have to travel much either, unlike the nomadic herders that only passed through Darach for shearing or a couple prospectors further afield that had gotten their hands on one of the beasts.

  Devlin checked the girth strap on his kardja, Myra. All was set,
Brian knew: why was his father was checking again? Devlin stepped over and stroked the kardja's neck and looked into its eyes.

  “Ready, dad?” Brian asked.

  Devlin just stood there. Ramona took Brian by the hand and led him away. She whispered, “First in conquest, last in retreat.”

  Brian looked at her, confused.

  “Let me tell you a story.” She walked down the path.

  “Shouldn't we wait?” Brian asked.

  “He'll catch up. And he's heard this before: in fact, he told me this one.” Brian perked up his ears. He had never heard her tell one of his father's stories.

  She began. For centuries the kardja had been what defined the mountain people. It was the sign of the nobility of Anatolia, the eastern steppes that bordered the fertile plain of Arcadia. Pride demanded a perfect animal, and to the Anatolians perfection meant several things: one that could be ridden, loaded, sheared. Even milked, she said. Brian thought he knew where this was going but relished the thought of hearing it from his mother's lips.

  “Is that why he trains them all summer?” Brian asked.

  “Yes,” she said, “that and your ridiculous expeditions.”

  Brian looked at her. Did she not like them?

  She laughed merrily. “Don't worry, I was pleased that you went. It was a little long, the year you were gone a month, but I was so happy for you. You know, I think your father still deceives himself. He thinks he's just being a smart caretaker. He believes it makes the animals stronger or more valuable or something like that.”

  “What do you think?” Brian asked.

  “I think he's a hopeless romantic.” Brian laughed too this time. The mere thought of it—“Mother?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “Why do you call this land Anatolia?”

  “Why? What do you call it?”

  “I—I don't know. I don't often speak of it. It is too large for everyday speech, and I never speak with someone who is outside it.”

  “But when you think of it, what do you name it?”

  Brian puckered his brow. “The land, the mountain—Mt Finola, with Darach below, the mountains around. Perhaps Liamtalam, as dad says, or the merchants in Darach.”

  A strange look came over Ramona's face. She looked right at Brian, his face and his eyes, but as Brian looked back it seemed she wasn't looking at him.

  “Mother?”

  “Yes, yes. Did you know that those names come from this story?”

  “They do?” So he was right, one of his favorites. He had only ever heard his father tell it, though.

  “Yes, listen and you will find out why.” Ramona told him the tale of Liam and Finola and the renaissance of the people of the kardja. Most of it Brian knew though some details—the dowries bestowed that year, solely in kardja—he'd never heard his father tell. His eyes glistened at the thought of such wealth. He couldn't imagine owning a thousand kardja as some of the great did in those days.

  The people of the kardja grew strong. Who wouldn't, with a stable, mobile source of wealth bred for the high steppes? They spread out into the dark corners of the long-avoided mountains and soon had a thriving trade with lowland Arcadia to the west. Nobles intermarried their children, exported kardja for horse, and built small palaces of their own. Two generations later the most powerful lived in Arcadia with their Anatolian estates funneling wealth for their consumption.

  In those days a campaign of Arcadians against southern enemies went poorly. They called on their allies for aid but the powerful Kyrians, lords of the city upon the mountain, were stymied in civil war. Ambitious nobles of Anatolian birth pledged support and mustered the steppes in haste.

  The mountain. His father never referred to any besides Finola as the mountain. Brian paid closer attention. He'd never heard it this way before—it was Arcadia, reaching out to her peer Anatolia, two sister states. Who were the Kyrians?

  Anatolia's vanguard, a cavalry of horsed nobles, sped on its way to battle. The slower but larger force of mounted kardja followed in their wake. Agents of the Arcadians took note of the leathery skin and grave faces and restrained their usual country jests.

  The young commanders galloped their way to an early death as the Great Desert of the southlands swallowed them whole. Coming across their carcasses the kardja wavered: calmer heads proclaimed this was not their war. That is when Liam, second son of a backwater family, rallied them.

  “'First in conquest, last in retreat,'” Ramona quoted. “That is what he said when his cousin tried to dissuade him. It was a family motto.”

  “But I always thought his family had no interest in war.”

  “They didn't. They valued leadership, initiative in doing the right thing. In this case they had pledged their honor. And you know the rest of his story.”

  Brian nodded. The kardja survived where horse could not and a week later routed the southerners. The army returned enthroned in victory; yet, without its leader. His kardja Finola had died in the battes; a mere week later in Arcadia, Liam fell ill from the feast and did not rise.

  “'Your kardja, your life,'” Brian quoted. “Liam lost Finola and it killed him.”

  Ramona stopped and grabbed Brian's arm. “Son, not all things are as they seem. A difficult decision had to be made. Please do not judge hastily.” Her eyes searched his, looking for agreement. “Your life is your own. None other can take it from you, not even Kerry. It is your choice to bestow it where you wish. Do you understand?”

  “Yes mother,” Brian said. “But what decision?”

  “I will tell you soon.” The list was growing of questions he had for his mother: would it ever shorten?

  “Ah, there they are! If only he could see him as I see him.” Brian turned to look. His father led the kardja into view around a spur of the mountain. His golden hair flamed in the morning sun and on his face was etched in bold lines the rough caresses of the mountain.

  They waited for him. Brian looked at his mother, and could not look away. Her black hair waved slightly in the breeze, framing the piercing black eyes. Strong and terrible she was, and no creature of the woods or hills struck more fear in his heart than her displeased black eyes. He had not seen them often thus but the few times his stupidity had put himself or others at risk were enough to burn it forever in his memory.

  He couldn't believe he was thinking this, but his fear of her comforted him. He knew her loyalty: that in the end she was on his side.

  But not now. The face was soft, the eyes almost abashed, as if seeking to hide behind the long black eyelashes but not able to. How is one shy in the presence of a man one has been married to a score of years?

  Devlin reached them and stopped. Brian felt as if the kardja—aye, even the wind—hushed for a moment. He looked at Ramona and held his hand out to her.

  She went to him. “My lord,” she bowed and kissed his hand. He raised her up and kissed her on both cheeks. “Astra,” he answered. She kissed him on the lips.

  Brian turned back to looking downhill. Astra?

  They made their way into town. Brian walked beside Kerry most of the way. He loved looking at her long gray coat, her deep eyes as she looked about her. At least some things didn't change. The talk with his mother had been pleasant enough but excruciating and confusing. He was tired of holding his secret in.

  Walking separate from his parents had an added bonus. He heard them speaking in low tones to each other, things that perhaps would not be said in his presence. Trying to decipher what they were saying kept him busy. Their actions were not surprising, just very interesting.

  He realized this was as different for them as for him. He didn't know how his parents would react to having to live in Darach, just like he didn't know if he would like a world under a green sun. But they were older and had seen more of the world. How much, exactly, of the world had his mother seen?

  The afternoon passed without incident. They set up camp with little fuss close to Darach. Ramona thought they should give their welcome and thanks
to Kerdae and Enda; Devlin thought tomorrow would be soon enough and he didn't wish to, at this hour, lay claim to their hospitality by such an action. When Ramona agreed, adding that she was in no mood for talk this evening, Brian sighed in relief.

  He feared what would happen when his mother crossed paths with certain busybodies of the town. Yet he craved for it to happen that he might gather some more shreds of what had actually happened. How does one live when what one fears and desires are one and the same?

  Neither Devlin nor Ramona brought up the pressing question. What would go first? Kardja or keepsake? Would both be necessary? Or could, by some miracle, another way be found? His parents' indecision didn't bode well for his quandaries, a single person and much younger.

  So it was that the tired family sought their makeshift beds for sleep. Their fraught minds fought their tired bodies. Brian may well have had the best of it, his child's mind more elastic to the strain; though, the long habits of a guarded wisdom, encircled by the love she bore her men and the calm assurance of their continued presence, were powerful allies in Ramona's repose.

  Devlin had absolutely no schooling but that in no way denied his search for depth—whether in the strong roots of a mountain, a woman who would love him for who he really was, or a slow revolution of thoughts through his mind until the gold settled out of the dross. His will, placid like a broad river, was no less effective in the carriage of his impressions to a unified resolve than the far broad-watered Gihon was in bearing half the trade in Arcadia upon its back.

  Paris looked up. He watched the woman walk into the village. Her uncovered head hid nothing of the thick black tresses cascading down. That alone was worthy of remark—blondes, all blondes, here on the edge of the wild, and dirty blondes at that.